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Deputy, former Panther gets 2nd chance through kidney donor program

CABARRUS COUNTY, N.C. — More than 120,000 people in the U.S. are on waiting lists for organ transplants, and 22 people die each day, waiting.

A Cabarrus County sheriff’s deputy was on that list. He’s already lived an incredible life, but now he gets to continue doing so because of someone else’s generosity.

At first glance, Deputy Gerald Williams may seem like any other officer patrolling the county.

But his story is quite different.

For starters, he spent eight years with the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was the team he idolized growing up.

“To put the icing on the cake,” Williams said, “I actually was coached by the player I idolized, that being Joe Greene.”

Williams then went to Charlotte, joining the Carolina Panthers during the team's first three seasons.

He said he and the other members of the defensive line were nicknamed the “Over the Hill Gang.”

“Probably of the 11 players, maybe 10 of us were all 33 or older. We were on the very downhill side of our careers. But we didn’t play that way,” Williams said.

But his biggest and arguably most important role is the one he's been living for the past eight months, as a kidney transplant recipient.

In 1997, during his last year with the Panthers, Williams was diagnosed with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a disease that attacks the kidneys. Over the years, FSGS caused his kidneys to slowly deteriorated.

Two years ago, he was put on a transplant list. His wife, Susie, was willing to donate one of her kidneys to him. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a match.

Meanwhile back in Pittsburgh, a woman named Brenda Nolf wanted to donate a kidney to a friend’s daughter who needed a transplant. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a match.

As luck would have it, Susie Williams was a match for the daughter of Nolf’s friend. And Nolf was a match for Gerald Williams.

That discovery was made through a "kidney pairing" program, which matches living donors with patients who need transplants.

Dr. Amit Tevar, a transplant surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, performed Williams’ surgery eight months ago.

Tevar said living donor transplants are so successful because organs are typically healthier than when a donor has just died.

Living Donors Resources:

“The living donor kidneys, they work better, longer and faster,” Tevar said. “Most times the recipients are only in the hospital three to four days at most.”

Now, Gerald and Susie Williams are counting their blessings this holiday season.

“The holidays for me will be special because I know that my wife was willing to do that for me -- and she did what she did for someone else,” Gerald Williams said.

He hopes that his NFL career and his work in law enforcement will give him the platform for his new role -- organ donation advocate.

“We are people of faith. I believe it was God's plan. I knew there would be a time when the kidney would come,” he said.

People who need kidney transplants can wait five years or more for one from a deceased donor.

The living donor program pairs patients with willing donors who are compatible with them.